The post-1793 museum situation collapsed with the fall of the Empire in 1814 and again in 1815, when the European Allies drove Napoleon out a second time. What followed was a major European debate on the future of this European heritage accumulated over two decades by France: it mobilized all the intellectuals of the time, including Jacob Grimm, Stendhal, the sculptor Canova, Goethe, the director of the Bologna Academy, ecclesiastics such as Carlo Fea, also an antiquarian, and cosmopolitan elites such as Alexander von Humboldt. Two main positions emerged. For some, art should be distributed "as in a starry sky", so that every small village should have at least one work of art; for others, on the contrary, works should be centralized, thus asserting national power through great museums, existing or to be built. In Berlin, for example, public opinion demanded that the reclaimed masterpieces should never again be dispersed and hidden from view in private dynastic collections, but should be brought together in a single institution, accessible to all.
After this major discussion, which lasted two or three years, the French model of national affirmation took hold in Europe, forging an inseparable link between the arts and arms, between patriotic strength and culture. The European museum landscape was recomposed from that of the Ancien Régime. New public museums were created and opened to the public to house the works resulting from the great restitution of 1815, such as the Pinacoteca Vaticana, the Glyptotheca in Munich, completed in 1830, the Altes Museum in Berlin, whose idea was born in 1815, and the Prado Museum in Spain. We are the heirs today of this great restitution of 1815, which marked the starting point of a new geography of the arts and museums in Europe.
